RConversation

Global Internet Freedom and the U.S. Government

Over the past two weeks I've testified in both the Senate and the House on how the U.S. should advance "Internet freedom." I submitted written testimony for both hearings which can be downloaded in PDF form here and here. Full transcripts will become available eventually but meanwhile you can click here to watch the Senate video and here to watch the House video. In both hearings I advocated a combination of corporate responsibility through the Global Network Initiative backed up by appropriate legislation given that some companies seem reluctant to hold themselves accountable voluntarily; revision of export controls and sanctions; and finally, funding and support for tools, and technologies and activism platforms that will counter-act suppression of online speech.

Lawmakers are moving forward to support research and technical development. February 4th Rep. David Wu [D-OR] and Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA] introduced the Internet Freedom Act of 2010, which would establish an Internet Freedom Foundation. The bill's core section reads:

(a) ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INTERNET FREEDOM FOUNDATION. - The National Science Foundation shall establish the Internet Freedom Foundation. The Internet Freedom Foundation shall -

(1) award competitive, merit-reviewed grants, cooperative aggreements, or contracts to private industry, universities, and other research and development organizations to develop deployable technologies to defeat Internet suppression and censorship; and
(2) award incentive prizes to private industry, universities, and other research and development organizations to develop deployable technologies to defeat Internet suppression and censorship.

(b) LIMITATION ON AUTHORITY. - Nothing in this Act shall be interpreted to authorize any action by the United States to interfere with foreign national censorship in furtherance of law enforcement aims that are consistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Whoever runs this foundation will have their work cut out for them in sorting out its strategies, goals, and priorities - and dealing with a great deal of thorny politics. The Falun Gong-affiliated Global Internet Freedom Consortium have been arguing that they were unfairly passed over for recent State Department grants which were given to other groups working on different tools that help you get around Internet blocking - "circumvention tools" as the technical community call them. For the past year they've been engaged in an aggressive campaign to lobby congress and the media to ensure they'll get a slice of future funds. (For examples of the fruits of their media lobbying effort see here, here, and here).

But the unfortunate bickering over who deserves government funding more than whom has distracted attention from the larger question of whether circumvention on its own is sufficient to defeat Internet censorship and suppression of online speech. In his recent blog post, Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention my friend and former colleague Ethan Zuckerman warns against an over-focus on circumvention: "We can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship." In short, he summarizes his main points:

- Internet circumvention is hard. It’s expensive. It can make it easier for people to send spam and steal identities.
- Circumventing censorship through proxies just gives people access to international content – it doesn’t address domestic censorship, which likely affects the majority of people’s internet behavior.
- Circumventing censorship doesn’t offer a defense against DDoS or other attacks that target a publisher.

While circumvention tools remain worthy of support as part of a basket of strategies, I agree with Ethan that circumvention is never going to be the silver bullet that some people make it out to be, for all the reasons he outlines in his blog post, which deserves to be read in full. As Ethan points out, as I pointed out in my own testimony, and as my research on Chinese blog censorship published last year has demonstrated, circumvention does nothing to help you access content that has been removed from the Internet completely - which is the main way that the Chinese government now censors the Chinese-language Internet. In my testimony I suggested several other tools and activities that require equal amount of focus:

• Tools and training to help people evade surveillance, detect spyware, and guard against cyber-attacks.
• Mechanisms to preserve and re-distribute censored content in various languages.
• Platforms through which citizens around the world can share "opposition research" about what different governments are doing to suppress online speech, and collaborate across borders to defeat censorship, surveillance, and attacks in ad-hoc, flexible ways as new problems arise during times of crisis.

As Ethan puts it:

- We need to shift our thinking from helping users in closed societies access blocked content to helping publishers reach all audiences. In doing so, we may gain those publishers as a valuable new set of allies as well as opening a new class of technical solutions.

- If our goal is to allow people in closed societies to access an online public sphere, or to use online tools to organize protests, we need to bring the administrators of these tools into the dialog. Secretary Clinton suggests that we make free speech part of the American brand identity – let’s find ways to challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms and to consider internet freedom to be a central part of their business mission. We need to address the fact that making their platforms unblockable has a cost for content hosts and that their business models currently don’t reward them for providing service to these users.

Which brings us to the issue of corporate responsibility for free expression and privacy on the Internet. I've been working with the Global Network Initiative for the past several years to develop a voluntary code of conduct centered on a set of basic principles for free expression and privacy based on U.N. documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international legal conventions. It is bolstered by a set of implementation guidelines and evaluation and accountability mechanisms, supported by a multi-stakeholder community of human rights groups, investors, and academics all dedicated to helping companies do the right thing and avoid making mistakes that restrict free expression and privacy on the Internet.

So far, however, only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have joined. Senator Durbin's March 2nd Senate hearing focused heavily on the question of why other companies have so far failed to join, what it would take to persuade them to join, and if they don't join whether laws should be passed that induce greater public accountability by companies on free expression and privacy. He has written letters to 30 U.S. companies in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. He expressed great displeasure in the hearing with most of their responses, and further disappointment that no company (other than Google which is already in the GNI) even had the guts to send a representative to testify in the hearing.  Durbin announced that he will "introduce legislation that would require Internet companies to take reasonable steps to protect human rights or face civil or criminal liability.” It is my understanding that his bill is still under construction, and it's not clear when he will introduce it (he's been rather preoccupied with healthcare and other domestic issues, after all).  Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), who convened Wednesday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing is also reported to be considering his own bill. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the ranking Republican at that hearing, made a plug for the Global Online Freedom Act of 2009, a somewhat revised version of a bill that he first introduced in 2006. 

I said at the hearing that the GNI probably wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the threat of Smith's legislation. I was not, however, asked my opinion on GOFA's specific content. Since GOFA's 2006 introduction I have critiqued it a number of times (see for example here, here, and here). As the years have passed - especially in the past year as the GNI got up and running yet most companies have still failed to engage meaningfully with it  - I have come to see the important role legislation could play in setting industry-wide standards and requirements, which companies can then tell governments they have no choice but to follow. That said, I continue to have concerns about parts of GOFA's approach. Here is a summary of the current bill written by the Congressional Research Service (I have bolded the parts of concern):

5/6/2009--Introduced.
Global Online Freedom Act of 2009 - Makes it U.S. policy to: (1) promote the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media; (2) use all appropriate instruments of U.S. influence to support the free flow of information without interference or discrimination; and (3) deter U.S. businesses from cooperating with Internet-restricting countries in effecting online censorship. Expresses the sense of Congress that: (1) the President should seek international agreements to protect Internet freedom; and (2) some U.S. businesses, in assisting foreign governments to restrict online access to U.S.-supported websites and government reports and to identify individual Internet users, are working contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests. Amends the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to require assessments of electronic information freedom in each foreign country. Establishes in the Department of State the Office of Global Internet Freedom (OGIF). Directs the Secretary of State to annually designate Internet-restricting countries. Prohibits, subject to waiver, U.S. businesses that provide to the public a commercial Internet search engine, communications services, or hosting services from locating, in such countries, any personally identifiable information used to establish or maintain an Internet services account. Requires U.S. businesses that collect or obtain personally identifiable information through the Internet to notify the OGIF and the Attorney General before responding to a disclosure request from an Internet-restricting country. Authorizes the Attorney General to prohibit a business from complying with the request, except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes. Requires U.S. businesses to report to the OGIF certain Internet censorship information involving Internet-restricting countries. Prohibits U.S. businesses that maintain Internet content hosting services from jamming U.S.-supported websites or U.S.-supported content in Internet-restricting countries. Authorizes the President to waive provisions of this Act: (1) to further the purposes of this Act; (2) if a country ceases restrictive activity; or (3) if it is the national interest of the United States.

My biggest concern has to do with the relationship GOFA would create between U.S. companies and the U.S. Attorney General. If the AG is made arbiter of whether content or account information requested by local law enforcement is for "legitimate law enforcement purposes" or not, that means the company has to share the information - which in the case of certain social networking services may include a great deal of non-public information about the user, who his or her friends are, and what they're saying to each other in casual conversation. Letting the U.S. AG review the insides of this person's account would certainly violate that user's privacy. It also puts companies at a competitive disadvantage in markets where users - even those who don't particularly like their own government - would consider an overly close relationship between a U.S. service provider and the U.S. government not to be in their interest. Take this hypothetical situation for example: An Egyptian college student decides to use a social networking site to set up a group protesting the arrest and torture of his brother. The Egyptian government demands the group be shut down and all account information associated with it handed over. In order to comply with GOFA, the company shares this student's account information and all content associated with that protest group with the U.S. Attorney General. What is the oversight to ensure that this information is not retained and shared with other U.S. government agencies interested in going on a fishing expedition to explore friendships among members of different Egyptian opposition groups? Why should we expect that user to be ok with such a possibility?

Another difficult issue to get right - which gets even harder with the advent of cloud computing - is the question of where user data is physically housed. The Center for Democracy and Technology,(PDF), Jonathan Zittrain and others have discussed some of the regulatory difficulties of personally identifiable information and its location. In 2008 Zittrain wrote:

As Internet law rapidly evolves, countries have repeatedly and successfully demanded that information be controlled or monitored, even when that information is hosted outside their borders. Forcing US companies to locate their servers outside IRCs [Internet Restricting Countries] would only make their services less reliable; it would not make them less regulable.

If the goal of GOFA is to discourage US companies from violating human rights, then it will probably be successful. But if the goal of the Act is to make the Internet more free and more safe, and not just push rights violations on foreign companies, then more must be done.

Then there is the problem of Internet Restricting Country designations themselves. I have long argued that it is problematic to divide the world into "internet restricting countries" and countries where we can assume everything is just fine, not to worry, no human rights concerns present. First of all I think that the list itself is going to quickly turn into a political and diplomatic football which will be subject to huge amounts of lobbying and politics, and thus will be very difficult to add new countries to the list. Secondly, regimes can change fast: in between annual revisions of the list you can have a coup or a rigged election whose victors demand companies to hand over dissident account information and censor political information, but companies are off the hook - having "done nothing illegal." Finally, while I am not drawing moral equivalence between Italy and Iran I do believe there is no country on earth, including the United States, where companies are not under pressure by government agencies to do things that arguably violate users' civil rights. Policy that acknowledges this honestly is less likely to hurt U.S. companies in many parts of the world where the last thing they need is for people to be able to provide "documentary proof" that they are extensions of the U.S. government's geopolitical agendas.

Therefore a more effective, ethically consistent and less hypocritical approach to the three problems I've described above would be to codify strict global privacy standards absolutely everywhere U.S. companies operate. Companies should be required by law to notify all users anywhere in the world in a clear, culturally and linguistically understandable way (not by trained lawyers but by normal people), exactly how and where their personally-identifying information is being stored and used and who has access to it under what circumstances. If users are better informed about how their data is being used, they can use better judgment about how or whether to use different commercial services - and seek more secure alternatives when necessary, perhaps even using some of the new tools and platforms run by non-profit activist organizations that Congress is hoping to fund. Congress could further bolster the privacy of global users of U.S. services by adopting something akin to the Council of Europe Privacy Convention.

Regarding censorship: again, as the Internet evolves further with semi-private social networking sites and mobile services we need to make sure that the information companies are required to share with the U.S. government doesn't end up violating user privacy.  I am doubtful that government agenices in some of the democracies unlikely to be put on the "internet restricting countries" list can really be trusted not to abuse the systems of censorship and intermediary liability that a growing number of democracies are implementing in the name of legitimate law enforcement purposes. Thus on censorship I also prefer global standards. There is real value in making companies retain internal records of the censorship requests that they receive all around the world in the event of a challenge in U.S. court regarding the lawfulness of a particular act of censorship - a private right of action in U.S. court which GOFA or its equivalent would potentially enable. It's also good to make companies establish clear and uniform procedures for how they handle censorship requests, so that they can prove if challenged in court that they are only responding to requests made in writing through official legal channels, rather than responding to requests that have no basis even in local law, despite claiming vaguely to the public that "we are only following local law." Companies should be required to exercise maximum transparency with users about what is being censored, at whose behest, and according to which law exactly. Congress could, for example, mandate that the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse mechanism or something similar should be utilized globally for all content takedowns.

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House of Representatives hearing today: The Google Predicament and U.S. Cyberspace Policy

I'm back on Capitol Hill today to testify in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. My full written testimony submitted for the record is here. The hearing will be webcast live on the House Foreign Relations Committee website here, and I believe the video will be archived on that page as well.

Yesterday members of the House launched an Internet Freedom Caucus and the Senate will be launching one as well later this month. Later this week I will write up my thoughts about Washington's recent flurry of activity on "Internet Freedom," including various efforts at legislation, funding to fight censorship and surveillance, and voluntary industry codes like the Global Network Initiative (with which I am actively involved). Meanwhile, here are the details of today's hearing:

Full Committee

Howard L. Berman (D-CA), Chairman

The Google Predicament:
Transforming U.S. Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security, and Trade

You are respectfully requested to attend the following open hearing of the Full Committee to be held in Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Date Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Time 10:00 AM

Location Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building

witnesses Nicole Wong, Esq.
Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
Google, Inc.

Ms. Rebecca MacKinnon
Visiting Fellow
Center for Information Technology Policy
Princeton University
Cofounder of Global Voices Online

Mr. Robert W. Holleyman, II
President and CEO
Business Software Alliance

Larry M. Wortzel, Ph.D.
Commissioner
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Note Hearing has been rescheduled from an earlier date of February 10, 2010.

Search Committee Site

Keywords Dates to Search In Hearings
News

Google Buzzkill

The launch of Google Buzz, the new social networking service tied to GMail, was a fiasco to say the least. Its default settings exposed people's e-mail contacts in frightening ways with serious privacy and human rights implications. Evgeny Morozov, who specializes in analyzing how authoritarian regimes use the Internet, put it bluntly last Friday in a blog post: "If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government."

According to the BBC, the Buzz development team bypassed Google's standard trial and testing procedures in order to launch the product quickly. Apparently, the company only tested it internally with Google employees and failed to test the product with a more diverse range of users who are more likely to have brought up the issues which were so glaringly obvious after launch. Google has apologized and moved to correct the most eggregious privacy flaws, though problems - including security issues - continue to be raised. PC World has a good overview of Buzz's evolution since launch.

Meanwhile, damage has been done not only to Google's reputation but also to an unknown number of users who found themselves and their contacts exposed in ways they did not choose or want. Exposing vulnerable users without their knowledge or choice even for a few hours can potentially have irreversible consequences. While Google is scoring some points around the tech policy world for reacting quickly and earnestly to the strident user outcry, the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC) has filed an official complaint with the FTC, and that Canada's Privacy Commissioner has expressed disappointment and asked Google to explain itself. (UPDATE: A class complaint has been filed in San Jose, claiming that Google broke the law by sharing personal data without users' consent.)

Earlier this week I asked people in my Twitter network how they're feeling about Buzz after the fixes they've made. Some are now reassured but others aren't. For example, Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote:

@rmack totally lost me for good.. I just can't believe that they won't do it again. It will have to be very useful/different to get me back

Some are leaving GMail altogether. Judson Dunn reported:

@rmack my boyfriend deleted his long time gmail account for good :(

I was so concerned about exposing people in my GMail network during the first week after launch that I stayed off Buzz entirely until Monday afternoon. By then I felt that the worst privacy problems had been fixed, and I understood well enough how to tweak the settings that I could at least go in without doing harm to others. After playing with it a bit and poking around I posted some initial observations and invited the people in my network to respond. There are still plenty of issues - some people who claimed in Twitter that they had turned off Buzz are still there, and I think Buzz should make it easier for people to use pseudonyms or nicknames not tied to their email address if they prefer.  From Beijing, Jeremy Goldkorn of the influential media blog Danwei responded: "I like the way Buzz works now, and it seems to me that the privacy concerns have been addressed."

I've noticed that some Chinese Buzz users have been using it to post and discuss material that has been censored by Chinese blog-hosting platforms and social networking sites. If Buzz becomes useful as a way to preserve and spread censored information around quickly, it seems to me that's a plus as long as people aren't being exposed in ways they don't want. My friend Isaac Mao wrote:

It's more important to Chinese to make information flowing rather than privacy concern this moment. With more hibernating animals in cave, we can't tell too much on the risks about identity, but more on how to wake up them.

Buzz has unleashed some potentials on sharing which just follows my Sharism theory, people actually have much more stuff to share before they realize them.

But I agree with any conerns on privacy, including the risks that authority may trace publishers in China. It's very much possible to be targeted once they were notified how profound the new tool is.

The "Great Firewall" is already at work on Buzz, at least in Beijing. While most people seem to be able to access Buzz through GMail on Chinese Internet connections, numerous people report from Beijing that at least some Google profiles - including mine and Isaac's - are blocked, though people in Shanghai and Guangzhou say they're not blocked. Others in China report having trouble posting comments to Buzz, though it's unclear whether this is a technical issue with Buzz or a Chinese network blocking issue, or some strange combination of the two. [UPDATE 2/21: Isaac (at the bottom of this buzz thread) and others (including somebody in the comments section of this post) report that our Google profiles are now accessible. It's not clear why they weren't at least for some people before.]

It will be interesting to see how things evolve, and whether activists in various countries find Buzz to be a useful alternative to Facebook and other platforms - or not. Whatever happens, I do think that Google fully deserves the negative press it has gotten and continues to get for the thoughtless way in which Buzz was rolled out. There are  senior people at Google whose job it is to focus on free expression issues, and others who work full time on privacy issues. Either the Buzz development team completely failed to consult with these people or were allowed to ignore them. I am inclined to believe the former instead of the latter, based on my interactions with the company through the Global Network Initiative and Google's support for Global Voices. Call me biased or sympathetic if you want, but I don't think that the company made a conscious decision to ignore the risks it was creating for human rights activists or people with abusive spouses - or anybody else with privacy concerns. However, if we do give Google the benefit of the doubt, then the only logical conclusion is that in this case, something about the company's management and internal communications was so broken that the company was unable to prevent a new product from unintentionally doing evil. Nick Summers at Newsweek thinks the problem is broader:

Google is so convinced of the righteousness of its mission statement that it launches products heedlessly. Take Google Books—the company was so in thrall with its plan to make all hardbound knowledge searchable that it did not anticipate a $125 million legal challenge from publishers. With Google Wave, engineers got high on their own talk that they had invented a means of communication superior to e-mail—until Wave launched and users laughed at its baffling un-usability. Last week, with Buzz, Google seemed so bewitched by the possibilities of a Google-y take on social networking that it went live without thinking through the privacy implications.

Whatever the case may be in terms of Google's internal thinking or intentions, we have a right to be concerned. Too many of us depend on Google for too many things. They have a responsibility to netizens around the world to develop more effective mechanisms to ensure that the concerns, interests, and rights of the world's netizens are adequately incorporated into the development process.

I'd very much like to hear your ideas for how netizens' concerns around the world - particularly from at-risk and marginalized communities who have the most to lose when Google gets things wrong - might be channeled to Google's development teams and product managers. Rather than wait for Google to figure this out, are there mechanisms that we as netizens might be able to build?  Are there things we can proactively do to help companies like Google avoid doing evil? Can we help them to avoid hurting us - and also help them to maximize the amount of good they can do?

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How not to save the Internet...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to give a big speech about Internet freedom on Thursday. People are calling on her to speak loudly against Chinese censorship and stand firm for free speech on the Chinese Internet - and elsewhere like Iran. I've been invited to attend and I'm also going to be on a post-game analysis panel.  But before the fun and games begin, I might as well add my two cents to the suggestion pile.

The wrong message for Clinton to give on Thursday would be something to the effect of: "Never fear, netizens of China, America is here to free you!"  

Even worse, related variants, such as: "Never fear, netizens of internet-censoring nations, America is here to save you, galloping in on our trusty steed Google, brandishing our mighty weapon, Twitter!!"

My dream speech would be about how the Internet poses a challenge to all governments and most companies (except those companies like Google whose business is built around that challenge). I would call on all governments to work together with citizens, companies and each other to build a globally interconnected, free and open network that enhances the lives of everybody on the planet, enables commerce and innovation by big and small players alike, makes everybody richer and freer, and improves all governments' relations with their citizens by making government more transparent, efficient, and thus more credible and legitimate.

I would quote Benjamin Franklin, who wrote in 1759: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

The speech would remind us all that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that American democracy was built on this assumption. The Internet empowers governments and law enforcement agencies as well as citizens, upstart candidates, and dissidents.  I would emphasize that the great challenge of our generation - as far as freedom is concerned - is to rediscover the right balance in the Internet age between society's need for security on the one hand, and the imperative of human rights and free expression on the other. Authoritarian nations obviously don't have the balance right which is why we consider them repressive. No democracy ever stops arguing internally about where the balance should be. But I would be honest about the fact that right now the world's democracies are arguing fiercely within and sometimes amongst themselves about where the right balance point should be in the Internet age. Wouldn't it be just so wonderful if the United States could take the lead in being honest rather than acting like the Lone Ranger on a white horse, much to the derision and cynicism of all my friends back in Asia, including the ones who hate their own governments?

The problem of censorship and surveillance is obviously many magnitudes worse when these things happen without a democratic political system, independent courts, and a free press. But as I've written here and here, I'm concerned that in the name of protecting children, fighting terror and preserving the intellectual property and pre-Internet business models of companies with deep pockets and powerful lobbies, Western democracies are going too far in enabling censorship and surveillance, in a way that in turn empowers and justifies what the Chinese and other authoritarian governments are doing. A few years ago China used to deny censoring because it wasn't something a government wanted to admit in polite company. Now they proudly respond to questions about their Internet policies along the lines of: "We're merely exercising our sovereign right just like everybody else. F-off."

The U.S. congress is getting energized again to make it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with surveillance in "internet-restricting countries" (an ever-growing list which - depending on how you define "internet-restricting" which one could argue over endlessly - includes a growing number of democracies and close U.S. trade partners). Yesterday Glenn Greenwald brought up a chillingly ironic fact about corporate collaboration with surveillance in America:

all of the sponsors of the pending bill to ban American companies from collaborating with domestic Internet spying in foreign countries -- the inspirationally-named Global Online Freedom Act of 2009 -- voted in favor of the 2008 bill to legalize what had been the illegal warrantless interception of emails and to immunize telecoms which helped our own government break the law in how it spied on Americans.

I will leave it there, and cross my fingers for Thursday. Meanwhile if you want a warm-up, I'll be speaking on a panel with Evgeny Morozov, Jim Fallows, Tim Wu and Sec. Clinton's special adviser Alec Ross at the New America Foundation tomorrow morning at 9:30am Eastern. The live webcast will be here.

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Google, China, and the future of freedom on the global Internet

Maybe it's because I was schooled in political science, not computer science. But frankly I've been surprised by the extent to which some respected commentators have focused on trashing Google for lacking purity of motive. As if that were some kind of brilliant revelation. Of course Google's actions are motivated by self-interest.

Self-interest is a complicated thing, and isn't only financial. I personally know quite a number of Googlers working in various locations around the world, some at fairly high levels. I get the sense that the emotional well-being of Google's founders, and many others with decision-making power throughout the company, is quite wrapped up in their belief in Google as a force for good in the world. Whether that belief is completely or only partially delusional is an open question. (Ken Auletta's new book on Google provides some useful insight on that front.) But let's be honest with ourselves. How many people on the planet do anything for 100% selfless reasons?

If having a free, open and just society depends on purity of motive, God help us all.

If executives at companies like Google conclude that it's in their self-interest to take a public stand against censorship and unlawful surveillance, and do things that contribute to freedom of information and openness, that is a good thing, whatever their deepest and truest motivations - which probably require years of psychoanalysis for even them to understand, at any rate.

Sure, we can trash Google for not being run by a bunch of Mother Theresas. We can further trash the U.S. government because its support for global Internet freedom  involves more pragmatism - and perhaps even a certain amount of hypocrisy and cynicism - than the high-falutin rhetoric suggests. In so doing we will not be factually wrong. But if we're interested in accomplishing anything beyond clever snark that boosts web traffic and sells books, that topic gets uninteresting pretty quickly. Having noted the obvious, the question I'm more interested in is: What should concerned netizens who want a more free and open global Internet do now?

I've got a suggestion: Why don't we focus on figuring out how to maximize the incentives for a lot more CEO's and government leaders around the world to support a free and open global Internet - for selfish reasons? Reasons like brand reputation, market share, long-term profit, voter support, political legitimacy, economic competitiveness, and geopolitical influence?

If you look at many of Google's recent statements, activities, and legal disputes that are un-related to China or even to authoritarian countries for that matter, a picture emerges about how the company perceives its long-term interests. Take for example a long memo to Google employees titled "The meaning of open" posted on the Google Policy Blog on December 21st 2009 by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President for Product Management. He writes:

Closed systems are well-defined and profitable, but only for those who control them. Open systems are chaotic and profitable, but only for those who understand them well and move faster than everyone else. Closed systems grow quickly while open systems evolve more slowly, so placing your bets on open requires the optimism, will, and means to think long term. Fortunately, at Google we have all three of these.

He concludes:

Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.

Google is betting its global business success on an open Internet. If you look at Google's latest China move through the lens of global Internet policy trends and not just through the lens of Chinese politics, or China's relationship with the West, it makes a lot more sense.  It makes sense from a business standpoint for Google not only to oppose censorship but to work actively against it, and do everything in their power to influence global policies, laws, and community practices that favor openness. In the past year they've gotten increasingly vocal about censorship - and not just in authoritarian countries like China. In this post Public Policy Director Bob Boorstin criticizes the Australian government's efforts to censor the Internet down under.  Not far below that, you'll find a post on the Google Policy Blog from December 14th about an internal anti-censorship workshop at which Ron Diebert of the Open Net Initiative gave a presentation about the spread of Internet censorship all over the world. Also present at the workshop were some of the world's most accomplished "hacktivists" like Nart Villeneuve and Greg Walton, whose mission in life is to help Internet users around the world circumvent censorship and evade surveillance. Now that Google has changed its public stance in China, my friend and Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman is hopeful that Google will get much more actively and directly involved in supporting, developing, and even hosting the tools people need to get around censorship. "A Google-backed anticensorship system," he writes, "would be massively more powerful (and threatening!) than the systems we know about today."

In the United States, Google's policy positions are frequently aligned with free speech activists and the open source/free culture community - as they go head-to-head against traditional telcos and media companies in policy fights over copyright law, Net Neutrality, the evil secretive and scary ACTA trade agreement, and other issues. In Italy, for example, Google executives are facing criminal charges because the Italian government wants to hold Internet companies like Google more directly liable for what users do on their services, which encourages a global trend that would inevitably result in companies having to massively increase the extent to which they track, police and censor users - which in turn not only has serious implications for human rights and free expression but also drastically increases Internet companies' overhead, making their business model much less sustainable. This isn't just a problem in Italy. Worried about piracy, cyber-bullying, child porn, and other ills, courts and parliaments in democracies around the world have been moving to increase intermediary liability for Internet companies. Crimes need to be punished, I'm not saying they shouldn't, but this particular solution throws the baby out with the bathwater. The chances that increased intermediary liability will be conducive to free speech, human rights, or a free and open Internet are low to nill as this excellent paper by the Center for Democracy and Technology explains. Which is why both Google and free speech activists oppose intermediary liability. Are we so naive as to think Google is acting altruistically? No. Intermediary liability hurts their business model. But it's no less helpful to have a powerful corporate ally on this issue.

On privacy, however, Google's actions, statements, and policies are not as well aligned with civil liberties and human rights activists.  Just ask the Electronic Privacy Information Center which has filed lawsuits and official complaints with government regulators over how Google fails to adequately protect user privacy in cloud computing, Google Books, etc.

Then there was CEO Eric Schmidt's infamous comment on CNBC late last year: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." What a horrible, frightening thing to hear if you're a Chinese human rights activist who depends on GMail, Google Groups, and Google Docs - as many of them have been doing. Google's damage-control people emphasized that Schmidt was talking about the Patriot Act and that he did not mean to express disregard for privacy more generally. But it sure didn't come off that way, and raised a lot of very legitimate concerns about Google's attitude to privacy. Going public about the Chinese cyber-attacks and declaring a willingness to leave China if necessary in order to protect GMail users undoubtedly helps reverse the p.r. and public trust problems caused by Schmidt's remark - whether or not this manner of handling the situation actually makes GMail users more secure given that GMail servers have never been located in China (or was the attack aided by an inside job?).

Still, if Google's stand against Chinese government-sponsored attacks on GMail's most vulnerable users leads to measures that boost the security and privacy of Google's inadequately secured cloud-based services - which ironically may have been exacerbated by U.S. government back-door surveillance requirements under the Patriot Act - that is an excellent result. However if the result ends up being a general underwear bomber-style public freakout that results in the U.S. security establishment getting even broader license to pick over Google's user data, with even less judicial/congressional oversight and public accountability than is presently the case under FISA and the Patriot Act, then that will be a very bad thing for free speech, democracy, and ultimately a free and open global Internet.  I am worried that the latter result is more likely, based on much of the rhetoric coming from American politicians and the tone of media coverage I've been seeing.

But the biggest problem with Google is not its intentions or the extent to which specific actions and policies align themselves with civil liberties lawyers, free expression groups and human rights activists.  The biggest problem is how Google says they advocate a free and open Internet, positions themselves as global leaders of this cause, then says "trust us, we're good people, we're working in your interest." Then we're just supposed to trust them. When has that been a good idea in any other human governance situation and why exactly are we supposed to expect that to work for us in this case? Is Google really run by Vulcans and not humans or something?

Privacy activist Katitza Rodriguez put her finger on the problem in a recent e-mail exchange about the implications of Google's China move (which I quote with her permission):  "Google's decision in China does not answer concerns in other countries about its growing domination of the Internet."

Jeff Jarvis, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and the New York Times have written in the past few days from different angles about how the Google has been playing a state-like role in this latest drama. Siva - who has a book coming out on Google called "The Googlization of Everything" - writes:

The Internet has enough diverse interests and players that it demands governance. No traditional state is in the position or willing to assume that role. So Google governs the Internet.

One could read this showdown (as I do) as a classic international power conflict between a major traditional state and a new, virtual state: the Googlenet.

Google is taking a risky stand to defend the Internet generally. This is what a weaker, threatened state would do.

Now, if I had to choose between the Chinese Communist Party as my government or Google as my government, I know in a heartbeat which one I'd choose. But that's like choosing between one king or another - you choose the one with the most benevolent behavior and cross your fingers.  I would prefer something else completely.

Societies with the highest levels of freedom, openness, and justice aren't that way because their leaders as individuals are the most morally superior specimens out there -  or because their citizens were born with higher proportions of goodness and lower proportions of evilness than people in other societies. They got that way thanks to institutions, mechanisms, and community standards designed to incentivize behavior that results in greater freedom, openness, and justice - however selfish powerful people's motives might be. This is why the most free, open and just societies are parliamentary democracies - not benevolent dictatorships, or theocracies, or dictatorships of the proletariat, or even patriarchal-bureaucratic autocracies run by wise elites schooled in the moral wisdom of ancient sages. Democracy assumes that power - even when held by the smartest and most well-intentioned people - always corrupts.  Therefore power must never be absolute. It must always be constrained by strong public supervision and accountability mechanisms.

Along with a lot of other Internet and telecommunications companies, plus everybody who creates, hosts, or enables web content and applications, Google's wide range of popular services have built a new virtual place we've come to know as "cyberspace," into which global human activity now extends. Google administers or controls increasingly large parts of this space where a growing percentage of global Internet users' activities happen. Google's power over our freedom in cyberspace is government-like - with real implications for our physical freedom in "meatspace," as the China situation clearly illustrates.

Thus Google has social responsibilities of a government-like nature toward its "users," who might be better described as "inhabitants" or "citizens" of the part of cyberspace that Google controls. These responsibilities are different and more complex than the conventional social responsibilities of companies toward customers who buy their products and services. Google (and for that matter all Internet and telecommunications companies who create, enable, and control different parts of cyberspace) needs to be held to different standards of accountability, oversight, and consent-of-the-governed than the people from whom we buy tennis shoes or canned soup. The responsibility of a soup company not to poison me, and the shoe company's responsibility not to sell me a shoddy product that makes me twist my ankle, can be dealt with largely through government regulation and national law. Regulation by national governments alone cannot address Google's trans-national moral and social obligations - as creator and protector of a place where I spend hours every day working, playing, politicking, and conducting the most intimate details of my life - to respect and protect my human rights. That's because Google competes directly with national governments for my loyalty and trust. What's more, Google recognizes that my trust and loyalty - and thus its business - depend in part on its willingness to protect me from efforts by national governments to violate my human rights. (And there is no government that won't make such efforts if presented with the opportunity to get away with it.)

In any place where governance and rule-making happens - whether through software code or written laws enforced by police - inhabitants have a choice. We can be subjects who submit to governance without consent, or we can be citizens who grant and withhold consent - and who are ultimately responsible for whether the government we've consented to fosters an open, free and just society or not. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as mere users of a service and start thinking of ourselves of inhabitants of a place called the Internet. We are Netizens. Time to get more proactive about shaping the Internet's future - and pushing its most powerful players in the direction we want them to go.

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have taken a first step toward recognizing that they are fallible and require greater ethical oversight than shareholders, boards of directors, and markets alone can provide. Last year they helped launch the Global Network Initiative, a multistakeholder effort together with human rights groups, socially responsible investors, and academics, in which they've pledged to uphold basic principles on free expression and privacy, committed to independent evaluations, and agreed to public accountability mechanisms. (Disclosure: I am a founding member and on the GNI board.) It's hard to know at this point whether the GNI will succeed - it's still very much an early-stage experiment. But it's at least a recognition that new forms of public oversight, transparency and accountability are required to make sure that the companies who hold so much power over so many people's lives do not abuse this power. It's an early attempt to figure out what shape those mechanisms need to take.

In the past century many political leaders who have facilitated their countries' peaceful transition from authoritarianism to democracy have done so because they recognized that their legitimacy and power would be strengthened - not weakened - by public oversight, institutional checks-and-balances, and clear consent-of-the-governed. Similarly, Internet and telecommunications companies around the world should recognize that submitting to greater public oversight, and doing things that facilitate a free and open Internet, will ultimately be good for their own survival. They may have simply intended to provide a commercial product or service, but they have wound up collectively creating a place that they jointly own along with other companies and with everybody who creates Internet content, hosts a website, or creates and runs applications. The new social responsibilities and obligations that come along with this role may make them uncomfortable and they may try to reject them - as many have indeed been doing adamantly. But we need to figure out how to help them understand. More importantly, it's in our interest as netizens to figure out what carrots and sticks will be effective to get them to do right by us.

Finally, a note on the future of national governments in the Internet age. Over the last eight hundred years or so human society has seen sovereign leaders slowly come to recognize that sharing power with the people makes everybody stronger and more prosperous, and decreases the likelihood that the leaders themselves - or all their friends and family - will die defending themselves against violent revolution. We transitioned from countries run by kings and queens to countries run by presidents and prime ministers. It took a very long time for this recognition to happen in just a couple of countries and longer still for people to figure out how to implement the idea of "consent of the governed" in a relatively scaleable and sustainable way. Many more countries embraced this idea in the past century while others have failed to do so - or tried and failed, or claimed to be a "people's" government while actually being something else. The Internet and the penetration of cyberspace into the lives of a critical mass of people around the world has created a whole new layer of struggle over sovereignty, rights, and legitimacy.

I am not one of those people who believe that the Internet is going to eliminate the human need for geographically-based government. But I do believe that we're starting to enter a time when enlightened governments will slowly come to recognize that their legitimacy along with the well-being of the societies they govern will be improved if they figure out ways not just to peacefully coexist - but to share power with the global cyber-nation. Each has a duty to help us - citizens of both physical and cyber space - to keep the other's power in check. Both must submit to appropriate public oversight. Both must commit to high standards of transparency if they want our trust - which they require in order to be successful and powerful for the long haul. We're very far from figuring out how to make it all work. But it is in our own self-interest as netizens to be proactive in doing what we can to help companies and governments come to grips with what is, unavoidably, in their own long-term interest.

Got suggestions for what we might put into a Constitution for the Global Cyber-Nation?  Please hit the comments section under this post and share them.

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Google puts its foot down.

This is a picture of people laying flowers and making a traditional bow of mourning in front of the Google sign outside Google's Beijing headquarters.

Google's announcement that it will "review" its business operations in China and is no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, is generating a range of reaction in China. Conversation over at the #googlecn hashtag on Twitter - created shortly after the announcement - has been raging fast and furious. The Chinese Twittersphere - comprised exclusively of people who are tech savvy enough to know how to get around censorship or they wouldn't be there - is generally cheering the news. Some need no translation, like this one which says: "Google's Do No Evil vs. CPC's Do No.1 Evil"(CPC means "Communist Party of China"). There's a report that the Tsinghua University security department has announced that students can't take flowers to Google without permission. Another person reports that all the Chinese Internet portals have been told by authorities that they're only allowed to use Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily reports on the subject - they're not allowed to use reports from other sources, and they should not feature today's news about Google on the front pages of their sites. Here is a report on how somebody posted a translation of Google's announcement on the Chinese web portal, Netease, and it was censored. One person suggests that leaving China frees up Google to focus on building the anti-censorship business instead of the censorship business. (UPDATE: China Digital Times is doing a running twitter translation here.)

On the other hand, a short Chinese-language report in Sina.com's tech section is generating a long thread of comments from people who are unhappy about Google's announcement because they don't want to lose access to Google. Somebody has set up a website, http://www.googlebacktochina.com/ with a Chinese header that translates approximately as "Give me back my Google." Famous tech blogger Keso mourns that Google's retreat brings the Chinese Internet one step closer to being an Intranet. Sichuan-based dissident Ran Yunfei is also unhappy, likening Google's retreat to a dissident who leaves China compared to one who stays in China and toughs it out.

Another flag-waving constituency is thumbing its nose and saying good riddance.

Google's decision is clearly controversial even among those in China who spend a lot of time fighting censorship, and is devastating to many more who aren't in the habit of using circumvention tools or don't know how.

Google's decision was tough and is going to have a great deal of of difficult fallout. Still, based on what I know, I think Google has done the right thing. They are sending a very public message - which people in China are hearing - that the Chinese government's approach to Internet regulation is unacceptable and poisonous. They are living up to their "don't be evil" motto - much mocked of late - and living up to their commitments to free speech and privacy as a member of the Global Network Initiative. 

I will be writing more on this topic soon - but first I must write the two articles I promised to write this evening, which are due in a few hours and not yet started...

U.S. and China on Internet freedom vs. security

Last week I attended a quiet event in San Francisco called the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum, organized by Microsoft. This is the forum's third year - last year they met in Shanghai and the year before in Redmond. Attendees included executives from major U.S. and Chinese Internet companies, a few academics, and government officials from both countries - the highest ranking being Cai MIngzhao, Deputy Director of the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department, and Robert Hormats, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs. The event was an opportunity for key players from industry and government - from the country which invented the Internet and the country with the world's largest number of Internet users - to hold frank conversations in a relatively informal setting without the pressure of government or business negotiations. For a good part of the time, however, I felt like I was in the middle of a more sophisticated and nuanced version of this video mashup on YouTube:

For readers who don't follow all the twists and turns of Chinese Internet policy and/or understand Chinese, a bit of background. (For people who do, skip down below the jump.) Earlier this year, the Chinese government issued an edict requiring that all computers sold in China after July 1st had to come pre-installed with censorware called Green Dam-Youth Escort. While the ostensible purpose of this software was child-protection, it also censored political content and subjected users to external monitoring. (The government later backed down on this edict as a result of industry backlash.) Soon after the government edict became public a BBC journalist asked Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman why the government was requiring Green Dam censor-ware on all of China's computers:

Qin Gang's response: 

"do you have any children? If you have any children or you are expecting some, you can understand the concern of the parents over the harmful Internet content. The Internet in China is open and the Chinese Government endeavors to promote sound development of the Internet. However, the Government also regulates the Internet according to law so as to safeguard the interests of the public and prevent the spread of harmful content."

The video juxtaposes Qin's statement with President Obama's remarks about the Internet at his town hall event in Shanghai: 

"Think about -- when I think about my daughters, Malia and Sasha -- one is 11, one is 8 -- from their room, they can get on the Internet and they can travel to Shanghai.  They can go anyplace in the world and they can learn about anything they want to learn about.  And that's just an enormous power that they have.  And that helps, I think, promote the kind of understanding that we talked about."

Back to the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum. Much of the day-and-a-half long forum was under the Chatham House Rule, which means that participants can report on what was said but can't attribute anything directly. There were, however, several on-the-record keynote speeches. Cai and Hormats echoed the Qin-Obama riff. Here is how Xinhua News Agency reported Cai's speech:

An important part of network security was to ensure the security of online information, said Cai Mingzhao, former deputy director of China's State Council Information Office and an adviser to the Internet Society of China [note: they omitted his Communist Party post], which co-hosted the one-and-a-half-day forum with Microsoft Corporation.

Pornography, fraud, spam, online attacks and computer viruses were serious threats to information security and were impairing the public's confidence in the Internet, he said in a keynote speech on Thursday.

"Under such circumstances, it is not enough to emphasize the free flow of information alone. Information security should be put in a prominent position," Cai told an audience of more than 100 government officials, business leaders, academics and other representatives from both countries.

"If network information security is not guaranteed, the information flow will become irregular. If illegal and harmful information are allowed to flow rampantly without checks, it will do great harm to the real society," he said.

Cai said the first priority of ensuring online security should be protecting adolescents, as teenagers had become the largest online group and whose growth was increasingly influenced by the Internet.

Each country has its own unique circumstances, differing from each other in Internet penetration, economic and social development, cultural traditions and laws, Cai said, adding that ensuring online security should fully respect the cultural diversity and concerns of all countries.

"Therefore, Internet security around the world is unable to be measured by a unified standard. It is impossible to regulate security with a single law or manage it in a single pattern," Cai said.

What Xinhua did not report is that Cai called for the U.S. and China to move beyond differences and instead work together on four issues of common concern: Child protection, online intellectual property protection, spam, and cyber-security. He called on the two sides to create specific bilateral workstreams focused on these issues. 

Hormats, on the other hand, spoke of common ground but also made it clear that the differences are meaningful. While Chinese media covered Cai's remarks, they did not mention any elements of Hormats' talk that differed from Cai's views. No U.S. media appear to have reported on the forum at all - at least not on news outlets available to the public domain. The State Department has not released a transcripts of his remarks either. I took notes and made a recording of his on-the-record speech in which Hormats emphasized that Internet freedom is important to the  U.S. government. Here is an extended excerpt of the portion of the speech devoted to free expression (with relevant links added):

...The Internet offers us an unparalleled opportunity to acquire knowledge if we allow ourselves unrestricted access to it. As president Obama noted in his townhall meeting, freely flowing information allows people to think for themselves and to generate new ideas. It also encourages a great deal of creativity. this is true not only politically but also economically. The internet has produced entire new industries and revolutionized distribution of design and development of both goods and services. Unrestricted access to information is vital to the types of innovation that spark economic growth.

...It is the users and developers of online content who make our connections to the world wide web so valuable. Secretary Clinton has made improved access to information a significant part of her policy focus. She stated in a recent speech: "President Obama and i are committed to defending freedom of expression on the new terrain of the 21st century." Within the State Department our newly revitalized Global Internet Freedom Taskforce is ready to play a leading role in this critical effort. The task force, a policy coordinating body within the state department, co-chaired by myself and the State Department's Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero, works to advance free expression and access to information on the Internet. The State Department monitors and reports on threats to Internet freedom around the world. It pursues the free flow of information and freedom of expression on the Internet in our bilateral relationship and through multilateral organizations as well. 

The right to freedom of expression and the importance of the free flow of information over the Internet were confirmed by all participating governments at both phases of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and then again in 2005, including the Tunis Commitment, and continue to form the foundation of U.S. government efforts on Internet freedom throughout the world. 

We also work closely with individual companies and industry groups to foster improved access to information. one example is the Global Network Initiative, a group of leading private sector companies, NGO's, academicians and investors, that seeks to advance both freedom of expression and privacy in information and communication technologies. A number of the authors and leading advocates of the GNI are represented here today, and i commend them for their vision and their initiative. As president obama noted in his town hall meeting in Shanghai, we believe that certain core principles enshrined in our founding documents are universal rights also present in international documents like the universal declaration of human rights and we speak out for these principles around the world

We believe that commerce should be open and the information should generally be freely accessible. we recognize that potential downsides and risks may come with new technology, such as threats to children and online ability of terrorists to use the internet to organize. we look forward to working with China and the private sector both here and abroad to mitigate these risks while maximizing the free flow of information. 

Hormats commended China for embracing the Internet and the global telecommunications revolution. He spoke at some length about the importance of the Internet in economic growth and recovery around the world. He also expressed concern about barriers erected by Chinese regulators against U.S. companies entering or fairly competing in the Chinese market. Later in the speech he also emphasized the importance of child protection, cyber security, and protecting intellectual property. If a full transcript of the speech becomes available later I will link to it here. (Update 12/19: An overview post about the forum by Microsoft VP Pamela Passman can be found here, and the transcript of a speech by Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie is here.)

In a closed door session devoted to Internet governance later that morning (which, according to the Chatham House Rule I can report on in general as long as I don't quote or attribute anybody directly), another Chinese official and another U.S. official outlined their governments' positions, with corporate and academic participants also contributing. 

The Chinese side emphasized that if Americans better understood the challenges faced by the Chinese government in maintaining social order, and if they realized that Chinese citizens hold high expectations toward their government in that regard, Americans would be more sympathetic to the Chinese government's policy choices and actions. Social problems tend to be amplified online and if people are allowed to do whatever they want on the Chinese Internet that would disrupt social stability, which they pointed out is in nobody's interest, and - given the Chinese Internet's size - isn't conducive to shared global goals of child protection, cyber-security and intellectual property protection anyway. They appealed to the Americans to focus more on commonalities and not try to impose their values on everybody else. 

The U.S. side focused more specifically on the future of global Internet governance, emphasizing three overarching goals: interconnectivity, free flow of information, and preserving the Internet's "dynamism." The best way of preserving that dynamism is to "leave it alone" as much as possible, and specifically not to put Internet governance in the hands of an "intergovernmental institution." The U.S. government supports a multistakeholder approach with a leading role for ICANN accompanied by a renewed mandate for the Internet Governance Forum. Putting Internet governance in the hands of inter-government bodies such as the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union is not desirable because such institutions can't keep up with the pace of technological change.  Restrictions on the free flow of information should be a "rare exception" in very narrowly defined cases of child pornography, human trafficking, and terrorism. Errors of under-reaction and over-reaction can only be achieved through continuous dialogue between public and private sectors. 

Asked to make some brief comments, I suggested that we combine components of both Chinese and U.S. suggestions made that day. Why not set up U.S.-China "work streams" to drill down on problem-solving in specific areas Mr. Cai suggested like cyber-security, child protection, and intellectual property. But as both Hormats and other U.S. officials pointed out, the Internet is what it is today not just thanks to the efforts of governments and big Internet companies, but because of the actions and choices of small entrepreneurs and individual Internet users of all kinds. Therefore it only makes sense that such work streams should be truly multi-stakeholder in nature, including members of civil society, representatives of user groups, consumer groups, open source programming groups, and other stakeholders - because after all, no solutions to any of the problems discussed are going to succeed without broad-based support and buy-in from netizens around the globe. Models for multi-stakeholder problem-solving are still in their infancy and have much room for improvement (as neither members of civil society nor the Chinese government hesitate to point out). So why not experiment with using bilateral meetings as an opportunity to improve on the multi-stakeholder model - in a more narrow situation involving only two cultures, instead of hundreds? A number of American heads nodded. I did not detect a positive reaction to this idea from the Chinese side. They did tell me that they wished my criticism of their censorship would be better balanced by an explanation of all the reasons why they need to do what they do. A corporate person asked me what might be done to help bridge misunderstandings between the two countries. I suggested that more direct dialogue between citizens of both countries - and more platforms to facilitate such interaction - would be helpful. 

Of course, the problem is that the Chinese citizens participating in such citizen dialogue may not necessarily be in lockstep with their government's positions... And oh yeah, you don't really need to build anything new or special because there are all kinds of great social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook out there... But wait they're blocked in China so Americans only wind up interacting with the most determined Chinese Internet users who are angry about censorship and figured out how to use circumvention tools....Which is why in another keynote speech at the forum, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argued that the best way for China to get its story out is to let its citizens communicate with the world through unblocked platforms...

...sigh....

China tightens Internet controls in the name of fighting porn, piracy, and cybercrime

As the year draws to a close, China's blocking of overseas websites - including Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites including this blog - is more extensive and technically more sophisticated than ever. Controls over domestic content have also been tightening. People who work for Chinese Internet companies continue to complain that they remain under heavy pressure to be more thorough about the way in which they police and censor blogging platforms, social networking sites, discussion forums, and any form of user-generated content. As feared, the censorship arms race, which began in the run-up to the anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, intensified after the Xinjiang riots, and ramped up further in the run-up to the October 1st 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China passed uneventfully.  

The past few weeks have seen four new moves which are not officially or overtly aimed at political content, but which have implications for the way in which the government controls all conveyors of all kinds of speech. First, late November saw the launch of a mobile porn crackdown. The draconian way in which this crackdown is being implemented, however, involves a great deal of collateral damage for non-pornographic content. For example, the crackdown has caused China Mobile and other wireless carriers to suspend all billing of all WAP and G+ mobile services, including those by legitimate companies in good standing who are not involved with porn. As this article in Chinese on DoNews points out, the mobile content market in China is growing fast and getting quite lucrative.

Second, Chinese the state-run media is going after the search engines again for - horror of horrors, turning up smutty results when users search for smutty information. In early December, China Central Television (CCTV) ran a report which accused Google, Baidu, and Sohu of irresponsibility. According to the research firm JLM Pacific Epoch: 

"The report said Google "persisted in its old ways" and "explored every avenue to avoid China's 'anti-low-brow' campaign" after previous reports on the subject by the state broadcaster but noted that Google's English version contains content far more obscene than its Chinese language site. None of the three parties has made any official response, the report said." 

I would not want to be running Google China these days. No fun.

Third, last week the government shut down more than 500 file-sharing websites as part of an anti-porn and anti-piracy crackdown, on the grounds that these websites don't have proper licenses. For a sampling of Chinese netizen reaction, see Global Voices Online and People's Daily Online.   ReadWriteWeb points out that given China's strict government controls on what movies can legally be shown, these sites are the only way for many Chinese to access a lot of content. Much political jockeying by the more established services is now underway, and Xinhua indicates that the largest file-sharing site, VeryCD is fighting for survival. 

Fourth, CNNIC, the organization which runs the .cn top-level domain has announced that it is no longer accepting domain name applications from individuals. The stated reason in news reports is to control abuse of the .cn domain name space by criminals. Under the new rules, if you want to buy any domain name ending in .cn you have to provide ID and proof of company or organizational registration. As the Internet Governance Project's Milton Mueller puts it, "China's government is using its control of domain names to impose more strict controls over the Internet." Chinese Internet users have an interesting take on this latest development. Some like William Long say that this is actually a good thing, because anybody who isn't in lockstep with the Chinese government is better off staying away from .cn to begin with. Since January he has been urging Chinese Internet users not to use .cn domains, even posting instructions for how to buy domains on GoDaddy, arguing that .cn domains are too risky because the government could take the domain away from you at any time on vague grounds that you are violating some Chinese law, regulation, or whatever. 

It's also worth noting that CNNIC is now applying to ICANN to run .中国 - and plans to apply for .网络 and .公司 whenever ICANN opens up the application process for generic top-level domains. As the Internet's domain name system becomes multilingual, will the Chinese language domain space be hospitable to anybody who is not in total synch with the PRC government? The answer is pretty clear by now: only if non-PRC entities can run Chinese-language top-level domains outside of China. Will ICANN ensure that this will indeed be possible? We don't know yet. ICANN is still formulating the application process for new generic top-level domains, which includes the details of a process by which governments can object to - and potentially block - applications.

Can authoritarianism survive the Internet?

I recently gave a talk to the annual luncheon of the World Press Freedom Committee in Washington, D.C. 

An edited transcript of the talk has been compiled by the WPFC and posted here. I recorded the speech on my iPod and below is a slidecast of the talk. Apologies for the less-than-ideal audio.

Can authoritarianism survive the Internet? Yes it can...

View more documents from rmackinnon.

Happy Internet Human Rights Day!

Today is the 98th anniversary of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and founding of the Republic of China in 1912. (I wonder how the 100th anniversary will be celebrated in the People's Republic two years from now?)  To mark the occasion, 15 Chinese intellectuals have issued a Declaration of Internet Human Rights, suggesting that netizens of China and the world celebrate October 10th to be Internet Human Rights Day.

C.A. Yeung at the blog Under the Jacaranda Tree has done a great public service and posted a translation. I've made a few small changes which I think clarify the meaning of the original Chinese version. Here it is:

Internet Human Rights Declaration
Issued by 15 Chinese Intellectuals

Those of us who are standing on the riverbank overlooking the torrent of history have witnessed the potential of this new technology: the Internet. We understand how this new technological revolution has brought about progress and social change. It has great potential to advance basic human rights and freedom for the Chinese people. Its contribution to civilisation will be on a par with the discovery of iron and fire, or the invention of plough and wheel in ancient times.

We acknowledge the arrival of netizen activism and regard it as an irreversible trend. Citizen reporting, which involves the use of mobile phones and digital cameras for live information dissemination, has already become a popular trend. The Internet has also provided netizens with unlimited space for creativity, and for voicing opinions through weblogs, podcasts, BBS and online comments.

We believe it is a citizen’s responsibility to be concerned about public affairs, and a netizen’s responsibility to care about freedom of speech on the Internet. Netizens are exercising their civil rights when they legally express their opinions or when they report the truth of what has actually happened. The best way to rejuvenate an ancient civilisation is to inject it with new core values based on the advancement of happiness and of basic human rights for individuals. It is also the best way to improve well-being for everyone in China. For these reasons, freedom of speech on the Internet should be encouraged, nurtured and tolerated.

We therefore pledge for the following principles to be endorsed:

1. Freedom of speech on the Internet is a part of citizens’ rights to freedom of speech. It is the most basic human rights and the most fundamental value that should be pursued, treasured and protected.

2. Netizens who express their opinions on the Internet using words, sounds, pictures or videos, should be protected and encouraged, as long as such conduct is in accord with the constitution and local statutes.

3. The right to publish opinion is the most basic rights for netizens. This includes the right to publish through weblogs and podcasts, as well as online discussion forums. Netizens’ rights to publish should not be subjected to unlawful investigation and interference. They should be allowed freedom to hold and to express their views without feeling intimidated.

4. Netizens’ editorial rights should be respected. When they are exercising those rights, they should not be subjected to harassment by authorities who act outside of law.

5. It is the right of Netizens to conduct interviews and to report their findings. This right is protected as a part of their constitutional rights to freedom of speech. Netizens who excercise this right should endeavour to report the truth, and to avoid distortions, fabrications and malicious slander.

6. It is the right of netizens to make comments and to exchange opinion. This includes the right to ask questions, to monitor, to criticise and to boycott.

7. Netizens’ freedom of speech encompasses a right to express themselves anonymously. Anonymity enables some authors to express their opinions in ways that best suit their needs. This legal right should be respected as long as an anonymous author is expressing his views in accordance with legal and constitutional requirements.

8. The right to search for information on the Internet is an integral part of netizens’ rights to expression, to be informed, and to act as watchdogs. It is our opinion that law-abiding websites should not be filtered, and that netizens’ rights to conduct searches on public information for personal use should be respected and protected.

9. Online privacy should be respected and protected. Netizens’ real identities and personal information should not be disclosed unless the information is required for a transparent legal proceeding, or else if the disclosure is necessary under the rule of law.

10. The free flow of information should be respected and protected as long as it is conducted in line with legal and constitutional requirements. Website monitoring, filtering and blockades that go against the principle of freedom of speech should be condemned by public opinion. Netizens are entitled to seek freedom of expression and justice through judicial proceedings.

We call for the establishing of an Internet Human Rights Day, to remind everyone of the need to safeguard freedom of speech on the Internet. This is the only effective way to make sure all people in China enjoy human rights and happiness.

10 October 1911 was the day when a group of patriots staged an uprising to end the rule of a cruel and racist dynasty. They also put an end to a long imperialist history. As a way of commemorating their bravery and their spirit of freedom, we suggest to make every October 10th China’s Internet Human Rights Day.

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